The Daily Vapors From Senator Graham

Lindsey Graham, the man with the portable fainting couch, is worried once again, this time about Chuck Hagel and his "disturbing" performance before the McCarthyite crackpots on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and about the state of the world, which Lindsey finds dark and ominous, with bustling in all the hedgerows, and filled with low growling from the underbrush. To borrow a line from Lawrence Ferlinghetti, give us this day our daily dread, senator.

When asked whether he'd filibuster a Hagel confirmation, Graham said: "I'm going to try to make sure that I get all the information - he made 15 speeches for money, I want to know what he said. I want to get all the information available to us so we can make an informed decision. But I can tell you this, I've never seen the world more dangerous than it is now."

I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis when I was nine-years old, Huckleberry. I hid under my desk at school. I prayed the Rosary with my parents while John Kennedy spoke from the Oval Office about "a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union." I spent most of my life with a couple thousand Soviet nukes pointed at me. I do not feel particularly imperiled by whatever it was that Chuck Hagel said in those 15 speeches, or that he said "containment" instead of "deterrence" when talking about the president's policy as regards to Iran. Presumably, the president still knows what his policy is. And even if Hagel believes in "containment" rather than "deterrence," so what? he can argue that out with Kerry, and with Brennan, and everybody else. The president doesn't have to listen to him, and it's not like "containment" is that outre a policy suggestion. Oh, I forgot, the Iranians don't value life the way we do because of the 12th Imam or something. My bad.

3. What a whiny little turd.

4. So, he wants to get information about all of his speeches, does he?

Maybe we need a record of all of his speeches and filter them out for any "disturbing" content? I'm sure that he gave some speeches in 2002-2003 that didn't turn out to be very accurate, truthful, etc.

6. Hagel merely misspoke when he said "position of containment"--

he'd been going round and round for hours with questions on his past statements of containment vs. prevention, but he'd previously made clear that he knew what the President's position was. Just a word mix-up--pretty sure Obama doesn't actually think there are 57 states, either. If that's the only ammo they got on him from his testimony, he did OK.